Jade Palace

In Carrboro is a nice little Chinese restaurant called Jade Palace. It looks like your everyday, average Chinese eatery, which is why my expectations weren't too high. But it seems this place has more to offer than you would expect.


My favorite dish was the sesame tofu. Most dishes with a sesame sauce are fried and served with a sugary syrup with some sesame seeds on top. This tofu was pan fried until it was crisp outside but still soft inside. And the sauce was focused on balancing salty and sweet tones with the sesame seeds. The net result was utterly awesome.


The dish I ordered was the honey chicken, which was more similar to normal Asian-American fare. The chicken was fried and served in what turned out to be a honey mustard sauce. While tasty, this dish did remind me a bit of fast food fried chicken. Next time I'll definitely stick with the sesame tofu since it was so different and unexpected. But our overall experience at Jade Palace was good: tasty food, quick and friendly service, and good (if not a little kitschy) atmosphere.

Made in Manhattan - 7/12/2009

As I mentioned in the last post, I took a trip this weekend to NYC. I was only in town for a couple days, but there was a great deal of eating to be done.


After getting our stuff settled into our Pod (a decently cheap, but very nice and cozy place to stay on E 51st St. between 2nd and 3rd Ave., we hoofed it over to Chinatown to go to Joe's Shanghai Restaurant. If you've seen any of the dumplings filled with soup that I've posted here (usually from No. 1 Panda), these are another example. The dumplings had a pork filling and a wonderfully meaty soup (the website explains how to eat them if you need a tutorial). They served the dumplings with a ginger-infused vinegar that, when used sparingly, added to the experience of eating the dumpling.




While we did feel a little full after the dumplings, who could pass up the opportunity to enjoy some more Chinese food? We had some moo shu pork, which is always great with the slight plummy taste from the plum sauce. I ordered the lion's head. I've attempted to make this myself and it definitely did not turn out this good. The meatballs were wonderfully savory and lightly packed. The outer sauce is difficult to explain because it was so dark, salty and earthy. The sauce brought a full-bodied quality to the meatballs that could not be beat. Joe's was a great restaurant that is worth the wait and the hurried service because it is so gosh-darn good.


Two good tips while you are traveling around NYC are to keep your eye open for food on the go. There are innumerable food vendors roaming the streets, including hot dog carts, roasted nuts and ice cream. We found a farmers' market with everything from fresh cheeses to produce to kittens (to adopt, not to eat). Just down the street was a street fair with lots of food, crafts and various odds and ends. We had roasted corn with honey butter sauce (very excellent, seen above, though the holder's identity has been blocked out to protect his innocence), falafel and chicken souvlaki. While it was great to go down the 5-6 blocks of the fair, be sure to ask about prices first if they are not overtly advertised. I ended up paying $10 for the decent but not-worth-the-price falafel.


On most of my trips, I do my best to find a cuisine that represents the area I'm visiting. For this trip, I vowed to find a black and white cookie (among other items that just did not fit our time or stomachs). While strolling through the city, we spied Crumbs. The shop sells cookies, cupcakes and full cakes of all sorts. Among them were this "candy cookie" with M&M-like candies (very good) and my two-toned wonder which hit every criterion I remembered for this baked good. It was thick, cakey (in fact, it appears it was baked and then the bottom was frosted for the full, flat face), and the creamy icings were a wonderful duo of vanilla and chocolate. The next time you're in the Big Apple, be sure to try all of these recommendations as part of your NYC experience.

Restaurant Round-up - 5/8/2009

No need to worry. Just because I have not posted in a couple weeks does not mean I'm not eating. In fact, I cooked so much last weekend that I ran out of time and energy to post it all. So I will be marathon posting my eating experiences tonight. Firstly, I want to talk about the food I didn't make.


While tooling around in Charlotte looking for a late dinner, Jessica and I happened across this place called Punchy's Diner. The main draw of the restaurant was that it looked like an old timey diner. It seems the owners may also own the auto parts store nearby (also named Punchy's), which makes them credible to prepare my food in my book. Inside the diner, they had a couple of old cars on display along with all of the usual diner paraphernalia. I could not resist getting this chili dog. For most places, chili dogs are a simple equation: hot dog + chili + bun. This restaurant chose to give the chili dog a North Carolinian flavor by topping it with cole slaw. The creamy deliciousness of the cole slaw helped to cool the chili, but also let the meaty chili pair with the hot dog. And steak fries are always a welcome side item.


New to Charlotte is an Ikea store. If you are in need of reasonably priced furniture or accessories or just want to get inspired, you should definitely stop by your local Ikea. Take as long as you want in the store, because they have a small cafeteria for all of your dietary needs. Now, Sweden may not be top of your list for your next international foodie adventure (we all have them, right?), but the food at Ikea is pretty good. My first choice was an obvious one: Swedish meatballs. The meatballs are served with some mashed potatoes and slathered with a light gravy, all of which forms a plate of tasty wonder on its own, but they added some lingonberry (I think) jam on the side. Like cranberry sauce with turkey, this jelly added a bit of sweetness to the savory meat.


To wash down our plate of pre-dinner, we drank from these juice boxes. I preferred the chrysanthemum drink to the lingonberry one (the latter tasted a little like grape juice). A nicely nostalgic way to rehydrate for more shopping.


Now to revisit a previously posted restaurant: No. 1 Panda. The first time we ate at this restaurant, we had a good time and I took ok pictures with my phone. This time was even better and I remembered my camera. I will admit, the service is still not optimum, but the food and the friendliness of the family working there more than make up for this. Two friends and I split three entrees that ended up coming out successively instead of all at once. This may have actually been better for us as communal eaters. First to be served was a beef brisket "casserole." Casserole in this context means a Chinese hot-pot beef stew. The beef and mixed veggies came out simmering in one of the most flavorful beef sauces I've ever had. This is my new favorite way to eat brisket. There's no way to describe all of the levels of flavor packed into this dish, so you'll just have to try it yourself.


The middle dish was a seafood medley. Clams, calamari, fish, and probably some other parts were combined in a light but delectable sauce that was perfect for table-wide picking. You can't lose with fresh seafood cooked just right.


Last but not least is crispy duck. I was expecting more Peking-style duck, but this one had a sturdy breading on the outside (sturdy enough for the duck to be fried whole and then cleanly chopped into pieces). Warning: this is the dish that took the longest to prepare, so buyer beware. At first, I thought the breading was salty, but then I came to realize that the duck meat itself may have been brined beforehand. The salty crispiness made me covet each piece a bit more, almost like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. I don't get to eat duck that often, but when I do I make sure to get it somewhere that knows what they're doing.

No. 1 Panda Chinese Restaurant - 3/6/2009

I don't remember if I've said this before, but I want to start posting food I get at restaurants in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area in addition to what I make myself. This will probably take some time to get off the ground, but it's worth a shot. This week, some friends and I went to Number 1 Panda Chinese Restaurant.


Sorry these pictures aren't the best since I only had my phone with me. The word on the street (which street, I'm not sure, but I got word from there anyways) is that this restaurant is more authentic than most other Chinese restaurants, which was definitely true. The menu is quite lengthy. We took about 10 minutes making up our minds because there were so many choices. They had some typical stir fries, but they had dishes you don't find at your local Takee Outee, pork liver stir fry and frogs legs being the most notables. They also had some interesting translations. "Sizzling cowboy bone" and "shelled shrimp (crab)" were my favorites.


We started with some dim sum (some dim sum dat), which is pretty much like an appetizer or tapas, though I hear they are often eaten for breakfast. This first item is a set of dumplings that are filled with "juicy pork," meaning the dumpling not only contains some good pork, but there is also some soup sealed within the dumpling. So when you bite into it, the juices release into your mouth. These were very delicate and also very delicious.


Our next dim sum was red bean sesame balls. They are balls of dough filled with a sweet red bean paste, then fried and covered with sesame seeds. A nice indulgence.


My meal was shrimp with walnuts. The shrimp had some thin batter on them, then they were mixed in a sweet sauce with the walnuts. You don't often think of walnuts when someone mentions shrimp, but this dish worked very nicely, though the sauce was a little on the sweet side. Our meal at No. 1 Panda was very good and I would recommend it to anyone in the area who wants some more traditional Chinese food.

Soup, Lion Head and Dangerous Desserts

This week began with another helping of lunch soup. I just can't help my soup cravings when the temperature is below 60 degrees. I made a New England-style turkey chowder. After cooking some onion in butter in a pot, I added some chicken broth, 2 diced potatoes, salt, and pepper. After cooking for about 15 minutes until the potatoes were tender, I stirred in some cubed turkey I had grilled up with garlic powder and rosemary. I dissolved cornstarch in 1% milk, then added this to the soup to add a thick, creaminess. I did have to doctor up the soup a bit with some more spices, but, in the end, it came out nicely, filling me up all week long.


This dish is Chinese (I believe) and it is called lion's head. The meatballs are made of a combination of ground pork, scallions, flour, egg whites, rice wine, ginger, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, salt, and pepper. They were cooked in a pan until browned, then added to a pot with 4 heads of bok choy, halved, and 3 cups of chicken stock. Bring the stock to a boil and simmer everything, covered, for about 40 minutes or until meatballs are cooked through, turning halfway through cooking. The bok choy turned out nicely cooked and the meatballs had a surprising amount of flavor from all of those varied ingredients. The overall taste was a slightly oniony, gingeriness. These would be good as a smaller appetizer size as well if you want. The steaming also helps them keep moist.


I'm not normally one for fresh green beans. Their flavor is usually too strong for me. But this recipe made them not only edible, but enjoyable. After blanching and shocking the green beans, I cooked some sliced shallots and garlic in a butter-olive oil combination until they were tender and fragrant. To this I added a can of tomatoes, allowing the mixture to cook for a few minutes. I added the beans back in and cooked them for about 10 minutes more. At the end, I added some dry white wine, basil, salt, and pepper. The tomato and onion flavors helped to improve the green beans, and the wine managed to add a slight sweetness to it all that was both surprising and delicious.


My graduate school program had recruits in this week and I made them these coffee crunch bars. The recipe is from Bon Appetit magazine, who adapted it from a friend of one of the authors who adapted it from her grandmother. They are like a cookie bar that is cooked for a bit longer without as much leavening agent. Brown sugar adds some depth of flavor and espresso powder compliments the chocolate chips. After baking the dough as a giant cookie, you slice it into bars and allow them to cool. While cooling they crisp up very nicely, making an all-around delicious dessert that is good pretty much any time of the day.


My mom sent me a recipe for an individual chocolate cake that you make a) in a coffee cup, b) in the microwave, and c) in 5 minutes. Here's the recipe:
4T flour
4T sugar
2T cocoa powder
1 egg
3T milk
3T vegetable oil
3T chocolate chips
1 dash vanilla extract

In a large coffee mug, mix dry ingredients. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in milk and oil and mix well. Add chocolate chips and vanilla, and mix one last time. Microwave on high for 3 minutes. Allow to cool and devour. If you want to present this outside of the mug, you can grease the mug but you would have to mix the ingredients separately. The cake comes out decently, though the top is a little dryer and the chocolate chips tend to accumulate at the bottom. But, if you are hell-bent on eating some chocolate calories, at least this is for 1-2 people as opposed to making a whole cake and eating a lot more. This recipe could probably be easily tweaked to make different types of cake, making it the most dangerous recipe ever...

Birthday Dim Sum - 11.29.08

For my birthday, Mom and Moe took me to a Chinese-Vietnamese restaurant in Pinellas Park that serves dim sum. Dim sum is a plethora of small dishes that most restaurants only serve for a limited time during the week. This restaurant, however, serves it all the time. I will apologize for the quality of the pictures as I used my phone to take them.


We started with a peculiar oddity that seemed to be a favorite of the Asians in the restaurant: chicken feet. They were marinated and cooked in a sweet-spicy sauce. They had good flavor, though the edible portion of the feet is mostly skin and softer tissues, not so much muscle meat. They were nicely tasty once I got over the weirdness of eating them.


Next off of the cart was some spare ribs. They are pork ribs (I think) that are chopped through the bone into small pieces, then slow cooked until tender and exuding savory flavor.


In order to get some carbohydrates going, we ordered some sticky rice. It came wrapped in lotus leaves, which gave it an earthy tone. The rice was very sticky (glutenous) and was made more delicious by the addition of mushrooms, pork and Chinese sausage slices (not too much but just enough). Other carby dishes that I did not photograph were some rice noodles wrapped around shrimp and drizzled with sweet soy sauce, shrimp tempura sandwiched between slices of Japanese eggplant, and steamed shrimp-chive dumplings.


On the slightly sweeter side, we had some buns filled with chopped, barbecued pork. The pork was mostly sweet, but not overwhelming as a filling in the bun.


Lastly, we had deep fried taro. I have no idea how this was made or how taro was used in the dish, but the end result were some football shapes with a crispy, delicate exterior, a soft, taro-flavored interior, and a shrimp-mushroom stuffing. Even after all of this food (and a bubble tea for dessert), I was not overly full, but I was definitely very content.